(Counterpoint: Some tech experts have predicted the rise of face computers for most of the past decade.) We’ll see, but it’s clear that there will be a lot of activity and attention on face computers and immersive technologies in all forms. I’m writing this now because Apple reportedly plans to introduce its first computers for the face in the next year or so.Īpple appears to imagine that its face computers - similar to Microsoft’s HoloLens, Snap’s experimental Spectacles or the failed Google Glass - will blend virtual images with the world around us, sometimes called “augmented reality.” Imagine watching a fix-it video of a car engine while a guide overlays diagrams on the fan belt that you’re trying to repair.Īpple has a reputation for making up-and-coming technology go mass market. That can happen by deliberate thought and careful design, or by the lack of it. It should be up to us, individually and collectively.

How we use technology shouldn’t be left to the companies that dream up electronics and software. (Ugh, that word again.) But I know that instead of letting Mark Zuckerberg or the Apple chief executive Tim Cook decide on the etiquette, ethics, norms, rewards and risks of our potential brave new world of technology, we need to do it. I don’t have a fleshed out good humans’ guidebook for the metaverse. But if computers on our faces and more lifelike digital realities are coming for us, let’s start thinking through the implications now. No one can predict how long it might take this imagined future of the internet to come true and go mainstream, if it ever does. I can get into the idea of glasses that let me scroll restaurant menu items and feel as if the sizzling burger is in front of me, or into headgear that lets me exercise next to a virtual lake in Patagonia. I am both apprehensive and excited about the potential next generation of technologies that may further blur the lines between computers and us, and between online and real life. But that’s partly what I’m talking about.) This term from science fiction has been applied to anything and everything that we should just call the internet.

(I don’t want to use the buzzword “ metaverse” here, because ugh. If the tech predictions pan out, we’ll soon be wearing computers on our faces and plugging into immersive realms of virtual people and places, perhaps blended with the real world around us. This article is part of the On Tech newsletter.

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